


it's a dialogue, not a fight

by cheriper, mikochan_noda



Series: Sasusaku Alter-Reality [2012-2015] [4]
Category: Naruto, Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Pacific Rim AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:55:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26845492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cheriper/pseuds/cheriper, https://archiveofourown.org/users/mikochan_noda/pseuds/mikochan_noda
Summary: “This means nothing to me.”Papers fluttered to the floor.(what sasuke meant to say: the drift is not quantifiable, or predictable.)“Twenty-eight minutes, Sasuke.”This time, she will truly become a force to reckon with.“Or I will pull rank, and go alone.”
Relationships: Uchiha Sasuke/Haruno Sakura
Series: Sasusaku Alter-Reality [2012-2015] [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1766242
Comments: 3
Kudos: 29





	it's a dialogue, not a fight

**I. INT’L NAME : ABK-006T | JPN CODENAME : SAIKEN | AUGUST 13, 2055 A.D.  
  
**The best defense of New Tokyo dived - made out of two-thousand tons, and two-fifty feet of dark titanium-steel - to the beams of the receiving bay, unable to polarize and attach themselves to the protruding retractor breaks, taking about one-fourth of the bay to ruins with a disgraceful stumble.

A few minutes later, the maintenance crew instantly fumigated _kaiju_ guts that stuck on its body, two gurneys and bustle of medics went immediately to the almost crumpled Conn-Pod head, its chassis groaning as one of its (bleeding) Rangers kicked the ruined door hatch open.  
  
Once the pilot - his body trembling, his cracked visor showing a lone red eye - saw a gurney wheeled across him, he heaved its unconscious body to the cot and growled, _you better live, dead-last_ , before collapsing himself to the ground.

Over their heads, the black digital rattles, and the war clock resets again.

* * *

  
  
II. **PENTECOST-HANSEN ACADEMY | KODIAK ISLAND | 2035 A.D.**

On December 12, 2029, in the middle of a raging tropical storm, a monster - a creature that the world had seen before, from what was colloquially known as the First Kaiju War - descended through the eye of a storm. The sky was painted grey, almost black. The shelf clouds that adorned the sky looked macabre and ominous. It was a storm that brought back the Kaiju, something the world had thought they had defeated. The biggest storm that had ever hit Asia, or even in the history of mankind.

It started out as an irregular cold front, that amassed winds rapidly within minutes. And for a day, it swallowed cities, causing flash coastal floods, drowning each nation and wreaking vengeance against humans. Infrastructures have been decimated. In a matter of two days, Taipei, Seoul and Okinawa was almost cleared of its civilization.

On the third day, the grey skies parted, but not to let sunlight in to the world distraught by the insane calamity. Lightning crackled, and thunder heralded the coming of the greatest horror the world would ever see (and would be seeing for the next years). It was a giant monstrosity covered with black and white scales, with gold slitted eyes and a long snout that hides long and sharp teeth, crying out a promise of retribution for their stunted plans four measly years ago.

_Kaiju._

All six thousand seven hundred five tons of horror.

After being torn apart by the worst and most powerful storm in the Ring of Fire, it seemed Japan was better off with the deluge. A kaiju, a monstrosity the world thought it had finally been free of, was back. If they only had the choice, they would have picked the force of nature toppling down the toys human civilizations had littered among the planet. No one who wanted to keep the human civilization on-going would choose the kaiju.

And this time, the kaiju had acquired another skill: It could glide through the air as if it were the waters between the Marianas Trench.

The raccoon-like kaiju, codenamed Shukaku, was lowered from the sky, curled in itself. Its eyes surveying the planet they missed on conquering four years ago: what changed, what remained, and how it was going to continue the fight they had started years ago.

Slowly, it unfurled itself from its body-ball. Its limbs stretched out, with a span of almost four hundred feet, showing a scaly body, its skin from where the limbs were attached were connected to form a winged section along the sides of its torso, before it swam through the air like it would have done if it still came from the breach beneath the Pacific.

It glided its way down to what had been left of Tokyo, before it pounced on the few remaining skyscrapers and jumped through the air once again. The earth shook every time Shukaku would land, sending dust and debris flying all over. The rain had not let up, even after the arrival of the kaiju. Between the dark, dark skies, the torrent of rain and the dump of what had been Tokyo, it had been without a doubt the darkest day in the history of mankind.

Shukaku barreled through what had remained of Neo-Tokyo, before moving on to Yokohama, and then Nagoya. It plowed through most of Kyoto before a Jaeger (mainly used for research until this very unfortunate day), flew straight from the abandoned Lima Shatterdome, attached with Jumphawks fighters, and stopped Shukaku from finding its way down to the barely recovering Okinawa.

It took two days, a quarter portion of Japan before they could reconfigure the Crimson Desert to battle-ready mode.

( _I_ _t took two days, a quarter portion of Japan, to realize that, once again, they needed Jaegers to protect mankind from a much-evolved species of conquerors. And they needed to level-up their game immediately, or face the threat of extinction._ )

Kaijus that followed after Shukaku, predictably, had shifted their physiological aspects, enhancing their skills until they could take the battle to the air, with thermodynamic fluid discharge that usually varies from extreme heat to freezing cold. It wasn’t long before storms began to brew one after another, their wind strengths and amount of precipitation varied in proportion to the mass of the kaiju that the eyes of the storms would unleash upon the earth.

They knew this would happen. Dr. Geiszler and Dr. Gottlieb predicted the monsters would be back, more terrible, and filled with more malice than the world had seen. Kaiju Science was jump-started once again, spurred by the momentum of the coming of Shukaku. Shatterdomes that had long been asleep from the shutdown issued by governments that favored the building of walls had been roused to home Jaegers.

With five to seven Jaegers per country quota to be filled, Jaegers had to be built, innovated, and equipped with better OS and biomechatronics. Nuclear shielding and better life support system were added, based on the reports by former Jaeger pilots and technicians. The PONS system, which had been explored and utilized for more practical and medical uses, had been developed further for Jaeger fittings.

Funding for Jaeger manufacturing poured. Suddenly, everyone was scrambling for protection. With the kaijus coming from storms brewing, being away from the Pacific rim doesn’t guarantee safety anymore. Suddenly, anywhere is fair game.

With the surge in Jaeger production, the need for Jaeger pilots also increased. But the thing was, even during the First Kaiju War, choosing Jaeger pilots had always been difficult. Finding one single pilot who excelled in training, simulation, and pilot-worthy were rare. Finding another person who could be drift compatible with the said excellent pilot was even more difficult.

The Pentecost-Hansen Academy then opened its gates on February 2030. After a public announcement of invitation for people brave enough to face these monstrosities, soldiers and specialists in all walks of life and races took up the challenge, cleared of the discouragements and uncertain circumstances from the previous war.

The Pentecost-Hansen Academy not only trained Jaeger pilot candidates, but also offered trainings for people interested in exploring Kaiju Science, Jaeger Systems, PONS Advancement Research and Robotics.

Upon the opening of its gates, there were fifteen thousand hopefuls for the Jaeger Training Program. Only eighteen made the cut.

And among the eighteen, only eight people survived.

( _the first one to be taken out was Armstrong, who was unable to master all the required disciplines. then one by one, they start to dwindle off: Marquis. Clyne. Barton. Lamperouge. Seiei. their first death though, was during the drift sync testing - Ikari accidentally tapped to the horrors she saw in becket-sensei’s mind, and suffered first a mental paralysis, before a vessel popped, and died of an acute stroke.  
  
These pairs remained :  
Yuy and Peacecraft  
Langley-Soryuu and Ayanami   
Atha and Zala : the first deployment casualty of their batch.  
Itachi and Shishui Uchiha._)

* * *

**III. JAEGER INFIRMARY STATION - N.TOK | AUGUST 17, 2055 | 0337H**

  


It was a dreaded report tucked in between the neural load assessments and the bloodstream radiation level-graph results.

Casualties are common occurrences in their job, even if Kaiju appearances are evenly spaced out, conquerors bidding their time to collect more information against their enemies they had once underestimated. But she always knew that the sentient beings of the Anteverse savored their frightened anticipation, like predators enjoying attempts of preys to fight back.  
  
The Gage-Half Syndrome. It was a common Jaeger Survivor sickness, where a Ranger would be unable to Drift with anyone else, as their minds were still connected with their expiring co-pilot. It was like being being killed with senses all alight in electrical impulses within a nanosecond, frying every nerve transmitter of the living pilot. Delving into the minds of a Jaeger pilot survivor was always a fifty-percent death sentence for the uninitiated.

For Sasuke’s case, that fifty percent is raised to ninety-five.

It’s an unspoken fact that its always dangerous Drifting with an Uchiha, who were believed to be almost mutated to adopt with the Kaiju themselves. Permanent red eyes. High intellect. Unexplainable clairvoyant capabilities in sensing Kaiju presence (which only a few people knew _why_ , but chose to never document and divulge the horrifying truth.) As if they were a different evolved specie from the Modern Homo sapiens. Searching for an individual with the same wave levels with an Uchiha was difficult. Matching his reflex-response time? Physical compatibility? Nearly impossible.

Sliding doors hiss, the dimmed lights of her personal receiving station filling the shadowed corridor. Being the Chief Medical Officer of the Tokyo Shatterdome has its merits, more so if the most efficient Jaeger pilots of Tokyo only sought a single specialist for their treatment.

Called as the second coming of Dr.Lightcap, Sakura Haruno, M.D was already a practicing neurosurgeon at 18. But she didn’t stop there, and became a world-renowned prodigy for her specialization in interventional neuroradiology, Kaiju pathologies, PONS-Drift advancements, Jaeger Connection Phenomenons, and dabbling in the effects of Kaiju exposure to human genetics in her spare time. All of these accomplishments were achieved by the time she was 23 years old.

And yet, 25 years since the start of the Arashi-Kaiju War, with the Earth currently half-burnt to ashes, half-drowned in constant rains, her expertise hardly mattered to change their situation.

She’s already thirty-three, had celebrated it last Spring when a Kaiju attacked Quezon province from a neighboring Pacific nation. Both of her boys responded within a few seconds, leaving her staring worriedly at the control room, where the winged hellish damnations beat another Jaegar to death ( **HEAVENSFURY** , March 2055; Killed Jaeger Pilot Hyuuga Neji. His wife and co-pilot, their current hydraulics and weapons engineer, survived.)

She was tired of having their shredded remains and grief-stricken shells.

Her life was summarized in numbers; The seconds and hours of their ETA. Toxicology levels. Half-lives of their meds. EEG patterns. Their Life-Support Maintenance. Vital sign stability. Two decades either watching comrades die, her near family blinking in sputters on a radar, or her hands buried in someone’s cranium, fingers cradling cortex slabs and mutilated spines.  
  
“Sakura.”

She startled out of her thoughts. Sasuke was no longer lying on the stiff, automatic surgical bed, but was already wearing his loose black sweat pants, and black _sando_ shirt, the standard patient strap-clothes neatly folded on his bedside table.  
  
Instead, Sasuke was sitting beside a still unconscious Naruto. He was reading another one of those silly shounen series that Naruto loved to collect and splurge his money on. Another of those post-Drift hangovers, effects where Sasuke would give a silent signal to her that he was craving for - of all things holy - _ramen_ , or Naruto would be all silent and brooding in silence at the corner of the relay bridge, wanting to be left alone.

This was also the moment where Sasuke’s hairline-trigger temper exacerbated even further, especially after grueling post-Drift sessions.

> _1\. don’t ask unnecessary questions._  
>  _2\. don’t tiptoe around topics._  
>  _3\. make your intentions clear._  
>  _– first sentences; guidelines on how to converse with post-drifters_

Ignoring the four bowls of _r_ _amen_ (one is empty, the other three were cold but filled to the brim) on Naruto’s bedside that was delivered to the Uzumaki-Uchiha pair after Jaeger deployments, she laid the meds besides the glass of water, gathers her prepared arguments and deeply inhales, nose flaring before starting a certain topic that was needed to be breached for years.

“Sasuke.”

“No.”

Their words were breathed out simultaneously, not one second too late. Glares almost mirrored each other, pairs of bright green determination and obstinate red aggression. Twenty years already passed since their last Bridging, and yet their connection remained intact. Formidable.

A debate went quietly without any spoken word; the twist of his lips, the furrow of her brows. Her index finger tapped against the right elbow sleeve of her rough white coat. His fist tightened, crumpling the cotton on his left knee. It was a conversation of wills.

“This is different.” Sakura’s near-infinite patience would not stand for this bullheadedness any longer. “It’s not just about you anymore, Sasuke.”

(she was about to say _us_ , but she’s never sure if there was. )

“ _Different_ _?_ ” He bared his teeth in suppressed irritation. “You are not suited for field combat. This is no test, Sakura. It’s different out there.”

“ _Masamune_ was no low-level, random experiment, Sasuke.“ She took a step forward, Naruto’s sleeping figure was their only barrier. He would not win this fight. "You didn’t even let me hold my ground, and ripped the PONS before -”

Sasuke suddenly stood up, the chair clattering to the floor, the fifth-gen metharocin, and potassium iodide pills spilling on the tabletop. She could almost feel the scalding heat of his furious stare.

“Are you so proud of those perfect simulation scores? Records you made two decades ago, _doctor_? ” His mocking became more bitter when he made a sarcastic laugh, the one that burned her ears red in humiliation whenever some teased her alien forehead or heard _kaiju-ko_ slurs back in the slums. “You haven’t been inside a Jaeger for _years_ _._ ”

“Don’t you ever underestimate me, Sasuke!” Her arms were bent at the sides, taut and ready to strike. “I know what really happened on that morning. You pulled rank, _Captain_. Against the better judgment of our superiors, you stripped me off of my Ranger candidacy, and then I was assigned to the Medical Division. If you’re telling me why I’m not good enough to be in that hulking piece of machine to fight, then let me spell it for you: it was _your fault_!”

Sasuke was about to retaliate, but Sakura was far from over.

“Three hours before another Kaiju landfall, Sasuke. Reinforcements will arrive at four. There are two reserve pilots you can possibly kill when they Drift with you. I’m your commanding officer, and yet I won’t pull that bullshit you made me go through.” She throws a clipboard at his face. “Thirty minutes to the Kwoon, Sasuke. I’ll show you my _incompetence_.”

And of course, he knew what the clipboard was, without glancing at it. It was their Drift Synchronization scores ever since they enrolled in the Academy, and the current update of the Jaeger-LOCCENT A.I., scouring the nationwide database on who has the highest survival rate to mind-meld with the most traumatized pilot in history and control the newest Mark weapon specially engineered for an Uchiha.

“This means nothing to me.”

Papers fluttered to the floor.

(what sasuke meant to say: _the drift is not quantifiable, or predictable_ _._ )

“Twenty-eight minutes, Sasuke.”

This time, she will truly become a force to reckon with.

“Or I'll pull rank, and go alone.”

_(a flash, two minds, battling, gnashing, sobbing, synaptic flares_

_the j-tech knew. they knew of sakura’s ability. she told them?_ )

Satisfied with his silence, and not waiting for him to recover, Sakura walked out, her heels clicking against the metal floor.

* * *

**IV. FUKUSHIMA EXCLUSION ZONE | JULY 10, 2030 A.D.**

It goes without saying that any boneslum ( _or exclusion zone, for the official term_ ) community is not a place to raise children. But since the arrival of Shukaku, and the onslaught of double-events ( _the fujiwara-uzumaki effect: a certain rotation range of twin-storms, can determine if it is an ordinary storm or quicker descents of a simultaneous two-kaiju attacks_ ), thousands, and thousands of people have been displaced from their habitats, and housing suddenly became a major global problem.

The Fukushima Boneslum was among the first boneslum communities the Second Kaiju War had precipitated. People who could not afford to move to higher places, or move to another place altogether to find what fragile safety they could, just swallowed their fears and built a community around the skull and bones of a fallen kaiju.

The community flourished, an economy was made out of sawing off bones and what’s left of the flesh of the monster. Kaiju market dug its way out of its slumber and boomed almost overnight. If there was one good thing humanity found upon this horror, it would be this: the commerce of monster.

After a few years, babies from mothers who lived on boneslums began to show signs of mutation. At first there were the extra phalanges, which doctors just chalked up as a consequence of their change in diet. Eventually, the extra phalanges became extra limbs, different eye colors, different hair colors and shriveled organs that usually result to early death. Mutated children grew in numbers, until geneticists found that the toxicity level of the boneslum could potentially change the physiology of unborn children so profoundly.

Mutation did not only manifest physically. One can find the most intelligent children among the alleys of boneslum. And so it wasn’t a surprise to find three Jaeger pilot candidates in the inner portions of the JPN-FSEXZ, on its inner portions of the reptilian mandible, discovered on July 10, 2030. 

  
_

  
As kids, they never wondered why such a pretty face was suddenly standing on their turf. He told them his name was _Sasuke_ , and that was all they needed to know to rope him into their daily antics. Fukushima Boneslum was an amalgam of various shops and garbage and people, and for the kids of the Boneslum, everywhere was a playground.

There was this place where they all congregate. The Ninja Academy, as they fondly call it. A small piece of space behind the Ichiraku Ramen ( _naruto would always say that the best ramen he ever tasted was ichiraku’s ramen_ ) littered with wooden crates of odds and ends and sometimes bad vegetables that the old man always tasked them to dispose of elsewhere. Every day, their group - a group of kids clearly clumped together by a similarity that always cast them in a different light with other kids - would meet at this cramped space and play, pretend they were just as normal like other kids.

The first time Sasuke came to this place, he had just found his way to Fukushima Boneslum. He had no one left. His brother was somewhere he doesn’t even know where leaving him alone to find his place in a world infested with five hundred foot monstrosities.

He was standing outside Ichiraku Ramen, his stomach complaining about being empty for three days now. The rain continued to soak his frail body, unmindful that the weight upon his back was also getting heavier as cold water continued to seep through his bag. The smell of warm broth clouded through his brain, that he did not notice the two odd kids - one was a pink-haired girl and the other was a sunshine blond boy - standing in front of him, trying to grab his attention by waving their hands a few breaths in front of his face.

“–Is he stupid? He looks stupid, Sakura-chan!”

“But he’s clearly a _kaiju-ko_. Look at those pretty red eyes–”

( _怪獣子 : monster child, a derogatory slur for children who grew up in boneslums._ )

_He’s a demon-lover! A kaiju-ko! Stay away from those freaky red eyes!_

“Such interesting shade of red can only be produced by genetic mutation from being exposed to kaiju blue toxins. And a kaiju-ko has a high IQ or at least improved physical abilities. My book said so.”

“Pfft~! Your book is lousyyy, Sakura-chaaan~!”

He thought they were crazy for _kaiju-ko_ brats. But that night, they treated him to hot ramen broth, stale bread and spread a tattered patchwork quilt upon the damp floor of The Ninja Academy. It didn’t matter that he had freaky red eyes.

( _But then they were their own brand of mutated children, so there weren’t a lot they could argue._ )

These two kids, clearly as homeless as he was, adopted him to their world. They played all day, scour for food, run through the alleys, be kids the way he never got to be when he was still a part of a (much-missed) family who was all manners, customs, and mathmath _math_.

Their little paradise among the litters lasted for a few months. It didn’t end; it just got a little better.

One day, the sun decided to peek out of the near-constant grey skies Tokyo seemed to have for the last months, a dark figure walked through the busy lanes of boneslum. A large dark umbrella was shielding her from the sun’s rays.

Who wanted to shy away from the sun? Sasuke thought.

Beside him, Naruto and Sakura were sucking on berry popsicles they had haggled. The popsicles had most probably expired way longer than could be safe, but they were still popsicles. The sun didn’t really shine as much to endorse popsicle eating, so they were trying to enjoy what could probably be their last for the year.

“Look at her.” Naruto pointed through his popsicle.

“Will you please refrain from pointing with the food in your mouth, Naruto.” Sakura reprimanded.

Naruto stood. They were at the terrace above the Ichiraku, and so they could see the comings and goings of the busy lane below. The dark figure stood out like a sore thumb in the middle of the rushing pedestrians. “No, look at her! Who wants an umbrella in this pretty weather?” Naruto shook his head in disbelief. “Crazy girl.”

As if she heard them (which she probably did, due to Naruto’s really loud voice), she stopped and turned to Ichiraku before looking up to where they were hanging out. Instinctively, the straighten up. The figure lowered her umbrella to her back, exposing a sad face and a short hair, streaked in blue. She was a woman clothed in mourning clothes.

“I don’t think she’s crazy.” Sasuke quietly said. He thought he had seen crazy. He had an uncle who thought about absurd dreams of becoming one with the Kaiju. He had seen sad. He was sad.

And the woman definitely did not look crazy.

-  
  


Turns out, the woman - Mrs. Mori-Becket - was looking for a kid, the younger brother to the top graduate of the Jaeger pilot school place. The Pentecost-Hansen Academy. His tiny heart stopped for a moment before it pumped out excitement through his nerves.

His brother!

His brother could be the one. Itachi-niisan had always been the best at everything. He could still remember nights under the vast night sky, filled with his nii-san’s stories and dreams. _Jaeger pilot_ , to save the family.

( _he never really understood his brother’s dream until he stepped into the Pentecost-Hansen himself. it was never about saving the family from kaijus, but saving the family from destroying the world itself._ )

Mrs. Mori-Becket asked for a kid of six, with red eyes and raven hair. Old Teuchi pointed at his shops second floor, and as she stepped into the sole room above the ramen shop, three young faces greeted her.

She smiled at them in greeting, a little sad but polite. Her eyes flitted over Sakura and Naruto, and when she looked at him, he thought she was spooked by his red eyes. He flinched.

She took a breath, a gasp before she smiled. Really smiled. Tears started to shine through her eyes, but her smile was better than the one she greeted them with.

This smile was sunshine, even better than the one outside the dark building.

  


  


* * *

**V. KWOON COMBAT ROOM | AUGUST 17, 2055 A.D. | 0357H |**

-  
  


Sasuke arrived three minutes earlier than his time.

The weak fluorescent barely lit the empty area, silhouettes lingering ominously over the wide entrance. He stood over its gaping mouth, and didn’t step in further to the illuminated radius of gray cement and blue mats, but she could see the red eyes that attempted to intimidate her, as if saying you cannot win.

( _the drift fragments accelerate to the forefront of their minds,_  
_asking true ? or false ? of the memories that they can only see_ )

Goaded by that simple stare, she threw his weapon for their spar. His hand flicked, caught the projectile by its handle and twirled it, his bare toes finally stepping in at blue borders of the match arena. The waning light made the burnt scars that covered his left collarbone and exposed arm starker, knowing that those rough, black cursed marks were spread all over his chest, scattered over his torso, finally ending at the sharp jut of his right hip.

Sakura expected him to dismiss her furious challenge. After all, he never did listen to her half of the time that she became their commanding officer. She tried to convince herself that it was probably Naruto’s tendency to break rules that had rubbed off him, but she always knew that Naruto at least heeded her advice.

[ _she could still hear her last orders from the most recent kaiju-attack to fall unto deaf ears: avoid the center. rangers, do **not** engage. uzumaki. uchiha. fall back.  
  
i repeat. **fall back.**_

 _the monster was already driven back away from the miracle mile by the **INOSHIKACHO** jaeger, yet the moment the kaiju was in a much safer distance, the **SNAKECUTTER** disregarded all protocol and initiated contact to attack the retreating kaiju_ _._ ]

“We end at three points.” The blunt, thin practice blade rotated between her three fingers, before gripping it with her thumb at its spine, then bending her knees to a defensive crouch. His eyes narrowed, focused on the slight rise of her left ankle, probably opting for a feint with her right.

He was proven correct when her left knee came up, and he swerved to avoid her hit, when she dropped the heel quickly in favor of stretching her right elbow and sliding her blade to hover over his carotid.

“One-zero.” Her triumphant laugh was cut short when he grasped her wrist, then pulled her forward, colliding their bodies in a strong thump, rest his nose along her neck and pressed his blade against her spine.

“One-one.” His deep voice rumbled against her skin, and without missing a beat, she pivoted to his open right, before he could feel the cold metal tip press against his clothed chest.

“Two-one.” Then she darted away from his range when he made a downward swipe, aiming for her thumb joint to release the blade. With ease, she lead their pace, falling to their familiar patterns, almost a comfortable to the three-fourth beats of a waltz, with the pulses kicking in time with the clash of their blades.

If her dignity wasn’t at stake here, Sakura would have enjoyed this.

But she was not playing around, and he anticipated the next strike when she raised her right arm, raising his right foot to counter the hidden strike of her left lower swing, and trapping her leg as they rolled down to the floor. He twisted her right wrist at her back, disabling her hold on her knife. Then, he widened the spaces between his knees to avoid any surprise attacks from her legs, and leaned over her with a knife hovering over her belly.

“Two…” Before he even finished the count, she wrapped her legs on his hips, ignoring the sting of the blunt weapon against the soft planes of her exposed stomach as she pressed herself against him, used her weight to pin him down, with her thumbs over the lump of his throat.

“Three-Two, Sasuke.” She panted, her thighs pressed closely at his sides, her whole body pressed tightly against the taut muscles and heated skin. Beads of sweat formed on her forehead, crawled across her neck, dripping to his face. The shadows dimmed the paleness of her face, except the bright green light of her eyes. She glared at him, knowing that he should yield, as there was absolutely no way for him to –

[ _a room with seven bright fluorescent lamps, surrounded by two-way mirrors. a pair of knives that ripped through fabric, a physical compatibility test :  
  
he smirks at her when he wins the third point, his right arm almost pinning her neck  
  
“you’re disappointed.”  
  
she knits her brows, purses her lips; those little gestures of irritation that she even barely displays , that he could read so well. _

_”it’s your performance.”  
  
her palm following the curve of his torso, her fingers curling at the jut of his hip _

_“you could have taken me down with two blows earlier”  
  
her knife following the ripple of his skin, pressing painfully at the back of his spine  
  
“don’t _**ever** _do that again.”_ ]

He rolled sideways, reversing their positions in an instant, with her grapple on his neck becoming a loose embrace. When she struggled to free herself by bending her knees to hit his center, his body slid downwards even further, his mouth an inch away from the bridge of her nose, the concave of her elbows suddenly settling on the dips of his shoulders.   
  
[ _“go.” sasuke hands her the steel helmet, eyes dark and solemn._ ]

Tied.

[ _“see you in the drift”_ _sakura laughs, excited with her first real mind bridging._ ]

Even after all these years, still fully synchronized with his thoughts, Sakura knew that the scarred fingers that flitted over the short pink tendrils over her nape were not only meant to emphasize his win, but to unweave the taut tension between as his lips touched over hers.

And Sakura thought, after ten years of phantom touches, the reality of his kiss had fired more of her nerves than any artificial hormonal snap of their head spaces.

* * *

  
  
VI. **CONN-PAD SITE | JULY 2035 | NEO-TOKYO TRAINING FACILITY**

LOCCENT was going crazy. Red lights were all alight, emergency & evacuation bells were blaring one over another, the riot of decibels and alarms were enough to stir the workers into a frenzied panic, even without the self-destruct jaeger simulation pad visuals. If the first line of simulation officers weren’t busy with fiddling with the controls, trying to minimize the damage in the algorithm of the simulation, they would have witnessed how a black hole would slowly implode.

As a common known fact, drifting with an Uchiha is a gamble with death in itself.

Drifting with Sasuke, after Itachi’s death, was almost an impossibility. Yet to the relief of PPDC, the theoretical examinations of psychoanalysts and rigid sync-drills rehearsals, Sakura Haruno was highly drift compatible to Sasuke, to everyone’s immense relief and surprise.

However, what they didn’t know back then was initiating a neural handshake between Sakura and Sasuke was a disaster in the making.

Two people, two minds, a yin-yang that spun madly, sucking everything inside–hate, love, pain, elation - emotions in opposite polar charges that coalesced to build and crumble. The Conn-Pod’s large-scale observation deck became an explosion of charts and color exhibiting the large quantities of wave properties. Rayleigh waves, a whisper behind the chaotic minds of the LOCCENT officers.

Sasuke’s psyche was more than anyone could ever take, a horrific experience no one would ever want to subject themselves to. Yet, since that fateful test, Sakura had always been inside his mind, a shard of her remaining as a small bright corner in an otherwise dark, dark space.  
  
Inside Sasuke there was a simmering pot of pain and loneliness, and that spot always reawakened him back to the natural state of his mind. He had known little joy and happiness, but memories with those type of emotions were few and far in between.  
  
To Sasuke, happiness is a foreign emotion, akin to a sickness, an annoyance.

And Sakura, despite living in the harsh conditions of the _Boneslum_ , knew all about joy and happiness, she was brimming with it. She craved it in the daylight while watching parents hold their children’s hands lest they get lost among the crowd. She dreamed about it at night, when the harsh winter winds had them half-frozen under their threadbare makeshift blankets. Every molecule of her body was shouting for the fulfillment of her heart’s desires, clawing out of her pores.

All the darkness inside Sasuke, and all the light inside Sakura, is too much for both of them. Too much of the things that are not them. The presence of what was inherently absent to them was unraveling in amalgam of ups and downs. The crest and troughs continue, till they cancel out the other with a sharp spike to become a flat line, told in blunt cruelty by physics.

Inside the headspace, a murder was taking place. A kaiju ripping through a village, as if houses were made of matchboxes and not concrete. There was a mother and a father and a pretty house with a pretty garden. heaven and hell smacked together, giving birth to purgatory.

And then there was nothing.

Void. Null. Zilch.  
  
Like their minds born anew.

Even up till now, the LOCCENT officers have no idea how they survived that simulation. It was just a simulation, but to them it felt like battling a Cat-6 with a Mark III. One moment, everything was going haywire, and all of a sudden the systems shut down. The pilots fell unconscious after a cry tore through their throats, and this they remember with terrifying clarity. To forget something that sounded like the devil was dying inside you was something that cannot be done in this lifetime.

Uchiha and Haruno fell into a coma for two weeks after the simulation.  
  


-  
  


What the officers didn’t know was the horror didn’t end at the simulation pod.  
  
Sasuke and Sakura continued to tread the horrors of each other, for two weeks that they were dead to the world, reliving each memory they had. _Alone_ , together, alone _together_.

In truth, It really never ended :

(1)

There were times when Sasuke would be blurting out _If each spike is independent of all the other spikes in the train, the temporal character of the neural code is determined by the behavior of time-dependent firing rate r(t)_ in the middle of bio-calibration in the company of Naruto and other mechanics.

(2)

One time, Sakura was in the middle of choosing her lunch between the herb lasagna and meatball spaghetti, and Sasuke was on the other side of the cafeteria, slurping through his first bowl of miso ramen when he could swear he had the most intense craving of pasta sauce while his tongue was bathed in the _umami_ taste of miso.

He shot up from his seat, and went straight to her. She cannot really explain it well - but before she could even sit beside Ino, she felt that he would be confronting her, for things she herself did not have the answers to.

“What the fuck was tha–”

“I don’t know either.”

He glared at her, and she could only give thanks that the lunch crowd was already thinning then.

“How can I taste the tomato sauce in your lunch–”

“–while you were eating your _miso ramen_? I don’t know, Sasuke. I shouldn’t even know you were eating _m_ _iso ramen_ _._ ” She glared back at him. Beside her, Ino had the presence of mind to leave the immediate vicinity before things get out of hand. After the simulation, the people around the Shatterdome simply would not risk putting Sasuke and Sakura together, or in the inevitable, get the hell away from them.

“You don’t _even_ like tomatoes.” Sasuke exclaimed, running a hand through his already messy locks.

“I don’t like tomatoes, yes.”

“And I don’t–” _like Miso._

_You favor Shio over Miso_

This is– “–insane.” They finished at the same time. Sakura sighed with all the frustrations of the unanswered questions and the thick of emotions that are ignored.

“We should just–”

“Hn.” And Sasuke turned his back on her and left the cafeteria, still half-hungry and even more annoyed than ever.

(3)

There were nights when the labs were stuck with more problems than answers, and Sakura’s mind would be hyper-awake in the dead of the night. And Sasuke would be there, inside her head, in her dreams.  
  
After the two-week coma, she thought his appearance in her mind was a vestige of his presence in her headspace. Until one night became two, then three, then six.

Sometimes, there would be nights in a row where he would be there, in the periphery of her dreams, or smack-dabbed right into her memory. Sometimes, there were months in between his night visits.

Sometimes, they would relive the worst of the memories. Cream walls bathed in thick, red blood of once great men. A young boy screaming his throat raw, trying to call out for help, begging for someone, anyone, to rescue him from his nightmares - or maybe he was trying to wake himself up from it. An old man with blood red eyes with an even darker soul turned his back on the boy while he walked towards them, the monsters which Sasuke would annihilate.

And she would be right there, beside him, trying to comfort the young boy, but he wouldn’t hear her. She would yell at him to _stop! stop crying! it’s all done, sasuke-kun!_ these are just memories! but he wouldn’t ever hear her.

He never heard her, even in the conscious world.

It was her dream, and his memories.  
  
They wake up, not knowing where she starts, or where he ends.

Sometimes, they would be in a place unfamiliar to him. She could feel his confusion in her mind as if she was the one confused. There were bouquets of flowers of different colors, and white lace draped on long, brown pews filled with serious dark-haired men and women on one side (with the exception of the only familiar face. he was standing beside sasuke and he was smiling, and it was the first time sasuke had seen him smile like that, she realized.) and the other side with faces she wanted to have known her whole life.

She could see a floor-length skirt - a cream ball gown, with the most perfect combination of silk and lace. She held a bunch of flowers - white daffodils, fragile lily of the valley, pale roses - and she jolts to the realization of what this was.

Her favorite fantasy. _Her dream._

And Sasuke was at the end of the red carpet-covered aisle. His eyes were still swimming with confusion but there was also something else there. Pain was etched on his face, and she didn’t understand all the emotions swirling inside him: anger, self-loathing, and fear. Fear for her, fear of losi–

She would wake up startled, gasping for air and feeling like she had just lost a part of her mind - which was pretty spot-on since that was what really happened.

It must have been how Sasuke felt when Itachi was abruptly cut off from their neural handshake.

[ **ghost drifting** _was what they call this phenomenon. years after the conception of neural access technology, and they still cannot find a logical explanation for these phantom-like episodes._ ]

(4)

And then there was _that night_ _,_ the night which started the pushing of boundaries, limits and unspoken rules between them. The night terrors were gone for a long while–two weeks since the last kaiju ripped through the Uchiha Complex for the nth time– and no one was lost in places they shouldn’t have access to.

That is, Sakura shouldn’t be inside one of Sasuke’s _darkest_ boxes.

The black door - devoid of knobs, keyholes and locks - creaks open with her touch.  
  
Sasuke sitting on his bed after a grueling training session, or so it would seem in this dream. Naked to the waist and wearing only his dark blue training sweatpants, with beads of sweat glistening upon his pale arms, his taut elbows on his parted knees, his eyes bore into hers as if he knew she would enter his room. As if he _expected_ her to.  
  
Except she knew it wasn’t in his room.  
  
She wasn’t even in the Shatterdome. The walls were bare and painted black. A dim overhead light bathed the room with soft white glow. There was only the bed in the far right corner.

Everything looked muted and subdued except for his presence. It was as if the room was intentionally made to fade into the background - emphasizing _Sasuke_ , and his stifling aura that filled the room.

His gaze bore into hers, compelling her with their intensity, like he wanted her to walk towards him. She could feel her feet carry her near to him, and hear a door slam close behind her.  
  
This wasn’t her dream anymore.  
  
_This was his._

Sasuke rose from the bed and met her before she even neared his spot on the bed.

He wrapped his arm around the circumference of her waist, and she let him, relaxing on his hold, and coiled her arms on top of his shoulders. She closed her eyes, and anticipated his mouth on hers.

[ _sasuke rolled sideways, reversing their positions in an instant, with her grapple on his neck becoming a loose embrace._ ]

Instead, she felt his surprise by the jerk of his body, the hesitating warm air against her lips. Her eyelids fluttered, and she almost untangled herself from his embrace when his hold on her tightened.

[ _when sakura struggled to free herself by bending her knees to hit his center, his body slid downwards even further, his mouth an inch away from the bridge of her nose, the concave of her elbows suddenly settling on the dips of his shoulders._ ]

His narrowed eyes - which was so close, she could see his dark gray hues that reminded her that this was still unreal - were completely unrepentant, even daring her to pull away and run.

[ _sakura knew that the scarred fingers that flitted over the short pink tendrils over her nape were not only meant to emphasize his win, but to straighten the taut tension between as his lips touched over hers._ ]

He slowly descends, lips hovered over her jaw line, through that sensitive spot below her left ear, branding her with the slightest of brushes, a last attempt to warn her, _stop me_ , the action said - yet for her, it was a silent claiming, a reminder that she is _his_ , and she responds with her thumb to press against the dip of his navel, to tell him _you’re mine_.  
  
[ _and sakura thought, after ten years of phantom touches, the reality of his kiss had fired more of her nerves than any artificial hormonal snap of their head spaces._ ]

She let out a close-mouthed moan, and knew, without any preamble from any lesson before, that it would fuel the fire within him until that very fire consumed his every thought.  
  
[ _the blade flicks a line across his shirt, cut the drawstrings of his pants, before her her fingers fumble to tear away his clothes._ ]

He grabbed her, she replied with searching arms, and on the earth of his bed, they both fell down. They started, like how they survived each little wars they faced, as children raised in poverty and ostracism, with the only earthly wealth they had were the threads that covered their backs, fending off the everyday struggle in a place that a human won’t even survive.  
  
After struggling within the skeleton gaps of the slums, after being adopted and raised from a litter of exceptional orphans, they faced literally one battle after another, against giants, against the day of reckoning, the fact that their lives were equivalent to the world’s survival – because to fight demons, you have to become the demon itself - and in truth, they are the spawns of these monstrosities: with their whiskered cheeks, the unnatural shade of their hair, the red taint of his eyes - they are monsters.  
  
_Kaiju-ko_ , monster-child; names they carry in scorn, and bear with pride.

And this was why, when both of them were stripped out of reason and left to their primal instincts, they fight, like a couple of brawlers defying their predetermined end.  
  
They live & breathe base tactics and rapid attacks : when to strike, when to take them. He nipped and bit; she clawed and marked. With every red road of sensual journey she made on his skin, he created red-purple trails along the terrain of her flesh.

[ _his fingers dives in to the fissures of scars and burns of her chest, as she sought the black ridges of muscle and cicatrices on the hard ridges of his belly._ ]

Clothes were strewn across the phantom tiles absentmindedly, with the goal to get their respite from the man-made flames that boiled beneath their skin. His hand trailed over the curve of her calf, to the back of her knees, until his hand gripped her thighs in a hold that painted a picture of their lust, declaring the same story her nails had written on his back.  
  
[ _sakura becomes an energy, as she pushes her weight for him to stumble out of his isolation, takes his hands to place them in her center, wanting him to step out of from this point of reference, where they had been in a standstill for a decade, in order to begin anew._

 _the need to move out of zero, to become one_ ]

He secured her leg around his waist, while the other held her neck captive. His lips they feel like liquid fire against her. And the flight isn’t even coming from the way his mouth moves over to the crevices of her chest; it’s feeling her skin upon his lips in this man-made gift of drifting.  
  
[ _her mouth closes over him, flicking in a delicate rhythm, even before he voices his want._ ]

This was what nature has gifted to people, a reward for trying to procreate.

[ _she commands him to taste her, and he obeys to her demands without questions_ ]  
  
Making love with the person you shared a mind with was a miracle.

[ _the real thing felt nothing like the drift._ ]  
  
Drifting while making love, it’s more than just an experience.

[ splayed crescents indented on their backs, pale sunsets refracting behind closed eyes.]  
  
It’s more than just being and an act. It goes beyond what we are as humans. It’s more than what anyone can bear, and it’s more than fucking addicting. It’s a sensation, a state of living that one would not want to part with.

[ _she pulls him. he drags her.  
  
__there was free fall. there was the descent, as they burned oxygen in each pant. they felt the skin and soot, the skies and storms thrummed within the cages of their chest , stars and soul converted into the physical conversations of wanting, of her need to be there with him in the end of the world, pushing themselves to their mortal limitations_ ]

Hormones soaring in your veins, sensations in helium-high levitation - all of that are multiplied twice by what the your partner was currently feeling. 

Sasuke completed her, even more so with the knowledge that this is the closest that Sasuke would ever come to feel with her, as if he belonged to each hollow and curve of her body, made to fit.

He rippled above her, breaking her apart then completing her again, over and over, until they were broken and whole.  
  
[ _he thinks of them as variables in correlations  
  
\+ (direct) is to ↑ = ↑ :  
if he increases the spaces in between them, the farther she could go the distances_

 _\- (inverse) is to ↓ = ↑ :  
the more he forces her down, the quicker she rises to the peak _]

She lifted herself to accommodate him as he flipped her on her stomach, taking her from behind. She breathed his name, a whispered prayer for a battle nearly reaching its end. He bit her left shoulder, the one near her nape, and she feels his satisfaction course through her. His hand cupped her breast, kneading it firmly with a ghost of the power behind his hand. This hand that could rip her to pieces slowly built her nearer and nearer to the top, rolling her nipple over his palm before he tweaked the nether summit between her thighs. The pain seared through her, his hand palming the nub for relief as the other one pressed her clit back and forth in a rough cadence.  
  
[ _she straddles him, her heels locked over the swell of his rump, and she pulls him to receive her kiss, her intimate embrace, mounting him, moving rapidly, her hands all over, a nail over his nipple, her tongue over his teeth, their sexes connected, and she dictates their pace_

_for them to work, she thinks in equations : d = vt + (½)at^2_

_to get the desired distance, despite the differing speeds between their breaths & the time lost as they fall, she must become his anchor, the accelerating constant, because she knows that he will meet her halfway _]

She held on to his arm, before she followed the ropes of strong muscles to his hand buried deep, pushing it further into her as if he could get any more closer. As if they could get any more connected than they are right now.  
  
[ _coulomb’s barrier dictates that to get the much desired reaction, one must destroy the powerful walls in between two nuclei. decrease their spaces, and create violent collisions with huge kinetic energies, strong enough for a lasting interaction to last and bind them together into a single nucleus._

_they are repulsing forces filled with positives and negatives that fused instantly, destroying the barriers of their own making. they have their nerves afire with the fuel of their emotions, their heated skins cold with sweat, their carotids rapidly dancing as they collide again and again._

_with one second, following the laws of the world, they finally end - sakura feels the crash for the first time, and he follows, collapsing with her, their bodies becoming burnout stars_ ]

And they did. With the lights bursting out and the world muted down, and finally, there was the peace that had eluded them since they drifted together for the first time. Ever since that first drift, there was only chaos and uncomfortable with everything. And this, in this culmination, there is that respite that they hadn’t known they would find.  
  
[ _as they catch themselves in between their spaces of respiration, she envelops herself with the first warmth of her afterglow, her face flushed, her hair spread all over the mat, his burnt arms still bearing the white marks of her fingers, she takes in the tangible proof that this, for the first time,_ it’s real ]

And they realized, it’s not like being home – because what do they know about homes, they grew up on the streets. It’s overcoming circumstances, coming full circle by their discovery of each other and accepting them. It’s being together in all the ways that matter.

[ _then the bubble of sunlit elation in her dimmed, suddenly eclipsed by that overwhelming emotion of despair, like the world was caving in.  
  
sakura feels the exact opposite __-_ but why…?  
  
_her naked body turns to sasuke, who an arm over his eyes, grinding his teeth. he lashes his tight arm, and with the heel of his hand, pushes himself up to the balls of his feet.  
  
she curls her knees, sits as she tries to stand, to reach out to him as he pulls his pants.  
  
_sasuke-kun…?  
  
_and he looks down on her, knives glinting between them.  
  
sasuke then looks her for a second, anger & fear roiling in tides, as his dark eyes linger at every shadow of her scars, and storms out off the kwoon combat room in the empty corridor _]

And soon, the vision sublimates into smoke, jolting her awake, not aware that these dreams will occur for a decade.  
  
**VII. INT’L NAME : ABK-007T | AUG 17, 2055 A.D. | 0529H | CONN-PAD | R.ENCEPH AREA  
  
**

-  
  


When the Conn-Pad RH-Encephalon area was suddenly devoid of the usual bustle from pre-launch activities, Sakura knew that he was finally _here._

“You shouldn’t be here.”  
  
Sakura didn’t need to answer the low growl beside her ear, as she let herself be engrossed in the simple task of swiping calibrations into place, lulling her with the rhythmic drone of the machine as it installed the updated neural synchronization parameters.  
  
She let the silence wash over them, with that familiar intense glare, now searing at the sight of untarnished PPDC ranger emblems and epaulettes on her shoulders, its luster refracting shades of bright caution-red, as the alarms blared at another kaiju-storm approach.  
  
“I know it’s not my job to reconfigure the pilot-ped hemispheres, but I’m appending the neural branch predictors and filters to enhance your sight. And naturally, I’m taking the left seat. ”

In the middle of checking for packet loss for every single artificial neurode, his steel glove hand enclosed around her wrist.  
  
“This isn’t a mere _test._ ”

He tugged at her hand, as she refused to look at him.  
  
“Stay back, Sakura.”

Enraged, Sakura answered with a snarl.

“So what are you saying, _Ranger_?” Her sweeping motions on the monitor became sharp, glaring at the blinking cursor at the parallel console, as the neon lights of the GUI-HUDs panel of the Conn-Pad flared across her faces.“That my victory in the Kwoon was a mere _fluke_?”

His fingers on her wrist tightened into a vise-like grip. He expels a nervous breath, before he leans over her with a whisper.

“ _Please._ ”

Sasuke thought - with his capitulation, this single word of vulnerability - would made her reconsider her decision.

But it’s always been a mistake, to underestimate her.  
  
“I’d rather risk everything, than to have you harm another pilot, or to fight out there, _alone_ _._ ” Sakura finally inclined her chin, her blazing green eyes meeting his. The hand that he held tightened into a fist. “I told you before, either I stand beside you, to fight, or I go solo. That’s your only choice. Don’t take this away from me, please, -”

The relay-helmets and feedback-cradles already detached themselves from their harness for them to receive, and she maneuvered her hand with a twist to get out of his grasp, still holding his gaze.  
  
“- or else, even if it’s you, Sasuke-kun, _even you_ -”  
  
Her mouth moved, her exhales warm on and fragrant on his nose.  
  
“I will never forgive you.”

( _“_ _don’t stop me, sakura. or i can’t forgive…even you.”_ )  
  
The hand that descended from the curve of his cheek, to the hollows of his neck, settled to the gaps in between his chest-plates.

Then, Sakura pushed him away.

And when she took the unfurling arm-rest of her peduncle-cradle, she felt them, the bombarding queues of valence - anger _resentment_ arousal _pride_ fear - hidden behind his unmovable facade, letting her know that despite all of that, he could still smell his scent on her own, the heat of her touch.  
  
The helmet fit snug on her head, and its inner sidelights illuminate her face, and looks at the window screen in her visor, unwilling to read Sasuke’s decision in her mind right now.  
  
“Yamanaka? I’ve already finished the pre-deploy checks and pre-drift links analysis. Status?”  
  
Her feet steps on the command platform, and the locking contraptions starts to close on her feet, to joints of her arms.  
  
“Boot is already done, Forehead.” Ino was speaking in an odd, neutral voice, feeling awkward from the conversation that everyone heard in the tech command room. “Neural handshake initiation will commence within two minutes.“  
  


-  
  


Hissing hydraulics startled her as her co-pilot took his place on the adjacent platform, his actions short and jerking as he stretched his limbs for the locks to quickly engage. She could almost see at the periphery of his spasming hand, as he stood rigid beside her, and his dark eyes spun to blood-red irises before they disappeared the relay gel that covered his visor.

For the first time, her heart thudded in excitement.

“Deploy drop, Ino-pig?”   
  


-  
  


“Acquired Ootsuki’s physical landfall coordinates.”

The information relay was curt and almost snappish, as if they were forced out of his mouth. Holographic images spark to life in the Conn-Pad HUD, the red sonar pinwheels rotating along with the revolutions of his eyes, as the neural branch predictors connected to his neurons and **33°07′N 139°41′E** blinked at the center. 

“Systems are clear. Fifteen seconds.”  
  
They both flicked the switch up from the levitating magnetic panels on their arms. Ino’s voice started her countdown.

(“7.”)  
  
A sudden pain lanced between his brows, trying to control his slowly growing trepidation that of all people, he was going to risk Sakura. But even if he could feel her slight anxiousness, that was overwhelmed with the simple joy that she’s going to be in Jaeger.  
  
With him.  
  
“Don’t chase the rabbits.”

(“6.”)  
  
Sasuke knows, that even since Sakura was a child, she had wanted to save the world.

[ _“isn’t this the kind of thing, that every kid want to do? saving the world?” she was trembling with excitement as the steel doors of the simulation room closed, their first-layer drivesuits hanging on their arms._ ]  
  
“If you let me do the punches?”  
  
(“5.”)  
  
Sasuke, in the other hand, just wanted to save her.  
  
[later on, when the kaiju’s claws buries deep into the spine of their jaeger, the fangs an inch away from their heads, sakura screams and brings a hard fist down to launch the nit-coolants on the kaiju’s three eyes]  
  
“Hn.”  
  
(“4.”)

From death. From the world’s ending. From monsters. From him.

[ _and as sasuke carries her unconscious body as they emerge from the cockpit in victory, laughs.the bubbling mirth that she had been holding all along inside._ ]  
  
(“3”)  
  
For once, as the pain was soothed by that comforting image of her smiling beside him, not even a small amount of fear that she’ll be back again to the horrors of his mind -  
  
“Ready to welcome me back to your head?”  
  
[ _and even now, with her eyes still fluttering, struggling to wake up, she holds him close._ ]  
  
(“2.”)  
  
Before second split between one and the launch, the moment when she’s flooded within the bright white-blue sea of memories, Sakura felt the amused curve at the corner of his lip as he answers her question.  
  
_You’ve never left my head.  
_  
(“0”)  
  
Together, they step forward.

* * *

  
**「終わり」**

**Author's Note:**

> posted at sasusaku-alterreality last august 17, 2013 & july 6, 2014  
> [[PART 1]()] + [[PART 2]()]


End file.
